Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum and I have been reading for a while now. However there is one question that I keep asking myself when I see al these great pictures!
When do you take those, and by that I mean.. do U go out and look for a good picture or do you just take your camera with you most of the time? Or some other time? I'm curious to know

Well, Im thinking of putting my FZ28 in my schoolbag, so when Im going to school I can quick take a picture. Quite often I see things I really want to photograph, but of course I dont have always a camera with me. Maybe I should just buy an FZ7 or so to really throw it in my bag, my FZ28 is as new and Id like to keep it like that....

1. I go out with a plan and intent to shoot, know where I'm headed, and bring all needed equipment for the job. Usually this is on weekends or vacations, when I'm out birding or shooting landscape, architecture, night, or travel.

2. I bring my DSLR with me with no real plan or intent. This also falls on a weekend, when I may just go for a drive, or to a friend's house, and bring the camera with me in case something strikes me as worth stopping and shooting - I may randomly decide to pop into a cool church to shoot, or photograph a garden or butterflies.

3. I either cannot or will not bring my DSLR, usually when I'm working during the weekdays, on business, going to meetings, seeing clients, commuting, etc. In which case I always have my ultracompact P&S on me, for those 'just-in-case, wish-I-had-a-camera' moments. I can still get better results and more control out of a dedicated P&S than a phone camera, so I stick with the P&S...maybe the day will come that a phone supplants the ultracompact, but not yet. I can't stand to not have any camera on me, so whenever the DSLR isn't with me, the ultracompact is.

I once travelled across the province to a shipmates funeral without my camera figuring I wouldn't need/use it why take it....
About 20km from home I came across 5 Wild Turkeys standing on the roadside in the middle of nowhere with the closest houses about 10km away.
We don't have Wild Turkeys supposedly in Nova Scotia.
That was ...the last time... I left the camera home.

Yes it happens for me everytime when i take my 70-200 F2.8 IS mk2 lens as its huge and it will give me lot of unwanted attention.. Forget abt taking photos on streets , even when i am at zoo or some other places where everybody holds their own photo gear in their hands but i still do get this attention and they are curious to know what gear i am holding. It irritates me but then there is no other choice as i havent bought this lens to keep it at home just bcoz i am getting unwanted attention from the people.

My suggestion take ur camera with you all the time , my advice for you is cover a lens which suits to both portraits and telephoto , that saves time for you to change your lens every now and then before u miss your interesting subject.

I generally carry my compact in my coat pocket everywhere I go, however sometimes I'm reluctant to take it on extremely cold days. It's a decent way to get some nice snapshots outdoors when something interesting happens.